President of NAACP Resigns

I wrote a piece about the NAACP right after Mfume left his post. Here’s an important snippet:

the NAACP is a highly centralized organization, with a bloated executive board. While local branches have some latitude, their responses to local issues involving race and/or racism have to be vetted by someone at National Headquarters. But the speed at which society moves can be dizzying. How quickly did the Indiana-Detroit NBA fracas die down after it was all that occupied the web for about a week? More importantly, how soon did the press drop the ball on the administration plan to cut Pell Grants significantly? Think about the speed at which decisions have to be made at the local, state, and federal level.

Now think about having to sift at least some of those decisions through a 64 member Executive Board. Think about what it would take to get them together (even virtually) to take a vote. Think about what type of event would have to happen to get them all on one accord. Because the NAACP wants to at some level protect the National Headquarters and the other branches from the potential mistakes of local branch leaders it has developed a top-down model. But a strong argument can be made that this top-down model squashes the ability of branches to develop unique solutions to their own problems. It also hampers the ability of local chapters to quickly and efficiently deal with issues as they arise.

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Excellent observation. Do you think that Gordon’s business background lead to more conflicts than this public issue with the E board? I still have a feeling there was a misalignment in the NAACP org goals and Gordon’s experiences.

quickly, lks, I believe that a relevant national organization would like an entity organized around things people have demonstrated a willingness to build and pay for. from an economic standpoint, if membership rolls and dues were to drive the organization (rather than corporate “philanthropy”), the organization would be driven by the authentic wishes of its members – whatever those wishes are. the naacp has been a compromised organization for decades – and it’s dual peaks of influence were around the time of the founding and the time of the Brown case…in any event, the principle struggle of black folks was never about the issues raised by dubois in 1909 or the desegregation of public schools. there are collectives of black folk who understand this – and who might be willing to join and subsidize a nat’l org. – but it won’t be the naacp.

If affairs within the NAACP operate as you’ve described, Spence, then they’re guilty of micromanagement. Having worked for and/or consulted my share of NGOs, I can say the attitude is commonplace. Reducing the number of directors wouldn’t necessarily produce a change in behavior.

Besides, they should have rules in place where only a quorum is needed to decide issues. While I agree with everyone here autocratic leadership doesn’t lend itself to transparency and feedback, NGOs by nature are private trusts legally bound to the cause outlined in their charters.

I always thought the selection of a technocrat from corporate America was a strange one for the NAACP and time has proven me correct, unfortunately.
Presuming Gordon took the job with the idea he would re-purpose the organization, he clearly misunderstood his responsibilities as its chief executive. I’d say calling them essentially a personality cult before a national audience didn’t help matters.

IMO, the NAACP is poorly organized. I think its board understands the need for internal administrative reform but has yet to figure out the correct mix of skills their executive(s) should have.

“One major debate is whether destruction of property can be included within the realm of nonviolence. This debate can be illustrated by the response to groups like the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, which use property destruction and sabotage as direct action tactics. Although these types of actions are often viewed as a form of violence, and even terrorism, many supporters of these types of actions define violence only as harm directed towards living things, and not towards property. The NAACP believes that through non-violence we can move forward the civil rights agenda affectively.”

what do you make of that? sounds a bit like the ANC.

Lester Spence
on March 8, 2007 at 1:09 pm

Where did you pull this quote from? While I do think this is a major debate theoretically, I don’t think it applies in the current American civil rights context. If the NAACP were to change their opinion on this issue overnight, we’d still have severe problems both in black communities, and in the naacp.